TheRetroCritic

I finally talk about the new Ghost In The Shell .

Much to most anime fans' displeasure, Hollywood finally delivered on its promise to adapt the hugely influential animated classic Ghost In The Shell from 1995, directed by Mamoru Oshii, with Scarlett Johansson playing the lead role. After a controversy which saw the project get accused of "whitewashing" and persisting complaints that such an adaptation is basically sacrilegious, this looked set to be the least popular remake since Ghostbusters . Indeed, after hardly glorious anime adaptations like Dragonball: Evolution and Speed Racer , it's no surprise why so many were nervous about this new venture. Early trailers looked uninspired yet the more we saw from the film, the more interesting it looked with its slick Blade Runner -meets-Neo Tokyo look and all the potentially cool action scenes on display. It's very clear, right off the bat, that a lot more effort was put into this film than the criminally lazy Dragonball: Evolution. Visually, this new Ghost In T

Disney continues its merciless rampage of adapting every single one of its classic animated films into live-action remakes and, this time, it's The Jungle Book 's turn. Jon Favreau directs an all-star cast of voice actors and a young newcomer in what promises to be a CGI visual treat. Indeed, pretty much everything in this movie is CGI from the talking animals to the jungle itself so if it's "realism" you're looking for, you might want to go for the 1994 live-action retelling instead. The film follows certain key plot points from the original 1967 animation but it definitely takes a lot of liberties with both the story and its characters. Mowgli (Neel Sethi) willingly walks away from his wolf pack before wondering why he has to leave and later comes back to fight Shere Khan which leads to a very different ending. Speaking of which, the unnerving build-up to Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba) is now gone and we see the villainous tiger pretty much straight-

I talk about Luc Besson's latest Lucy . And make that face.

Well this was a movie and it happened. As to what movie this was and what happened in it, I'm not entirely sure. Initially, Luc Besson's latest looked like a fun but dumb sci-fi thriller about Scarlett Johansson going around kicking all sorts of butts with super powers. Admittedly, that does take place in this movie but somehow, it doesn't really work. The main problem is that Lucy is REALLY dumb, to the point where each aspect of it becomes distracting. Hell, even the film itself is distracted as, during its first half, it keeps cutting to random footage of animals or whatever someone's talking about. If someone mentions reproduction, we get a montage of people and animals having sex, if someone mentions space, we cut to space. Some of it is obvious symbolism, some of it I think was meant to be a joke, none of it is new, edgy, funny or clever in any way. It's mostly irritating, frankly. Luckily, the plot kicks in quick and it makes even less sense than Li

After the double dose of disappointment Marvel offered us a year prior ( The Wolverine , Iron Man 3 ), I was certainly nervous about the direction the company was taking for its second phase, even though  Thor: The Dark World wasn't too bad. Thankfully, Marvel came back to prove me wrong, very wrong, with Captain America: The Winter Soldier , the present day-set sequel to The First Avenger . The real worry I had going into this one was that it would just feel like yet another Avengers Assemble , giving up on the retro feel of the first Captain America movie altogether, something I personally love about the character and that particular flick. As it turns out, The Winter Soldier is deeply rooted in the character's history and we actually get to see how that history had an impact on Steve Rogers' present. Sure, the film goes for a decidedly modern thriller vibe but it still manages to feel like a superhero movie and keep some good old-fashioned camp intact. With Jo

Spike Jonze doesn't make a feature film very often but when he does, it usually goes right up my list of favourite movies. Being John Malkovitch is, to this day, a film I'm still a big fan of, as is Adaptation and Where The Wild Things Are , still   one of the best films about childhood out there in my opinion. From its trailer, Her looked weirdly soppy but its intriguing premise looked like it might have much more to offer and, seeing as the film is just over two hours long, it was bound to have a little more to it than just a quirky guy-meets-phone love story. The film stars the ever-great Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore, a lonely dude going through an emotionally draining divorce (Rooney Mara plays the ex) and looking to move on. The story is set some time in the near future which is why Theodore works for a company which writes hand-written (but actually dictated) letters on behalf of random people who hire their services. Also, in the future, moustaches and high-waiste

The first Iron Man took people by surprise in that it was actually pretty darn good. After the catastrophe that was the Fantastic Four franchise, this was nothing short of a miracle. Was Marvel finally ready to take on more challenges? Make more decent superhero films? Hell yeah! With Robert Downey Jr. officially back in everyone's good books after his career tumbled despite taking on the Charlie Chaplin role in Richard Attenborough's critically acclaimed biopic, a decent run in Ally MacBeal and the fact he's one of the most talented actors around,  this sequel was able to give the actor a little more creative freedom and allowed the franchise to go wild and have some fun. Tony Stark goes through quite a few ups and downs in this movie as he starts to enjoy his fame as the self-proclaimed Iron Man a bit too much, even defying U.S. officials in typical cocky, flashy fashion before losing control completely and finding refuge in alcoholism following a bad run-in w